This past Saturday, approximately 130,000 people attended the annual National Book Festival on The Mall in Washington D.C.(photo at left). Erica and I were thrilled to be there - swept up in all the wonderful book madness and swept away by some brief encounters.

Lee Child (pictured right) is one of our absolute favorite people and we were so happy to run into him on The Mall!

Want to know where Jack Reacher's next adventure will take him? How about his next TWO adventures???

Okay. I can tell you. According to Lee, the next book will take place in South Dakota. The one after that will be set in Nebraska.

Like I said...News from The Mall!

To my utter delight, I had a few minutes to sit and chat with Nicholas Sparks. The discussion at the table was about the in-general, too-early introduction to Shakespeare in schools. Nick's suggested reading is:

7th grade - The Notebook

8th grade - A Farewell to Arms

9th grade (high school) - Romeo and Juliet (or any Shakespeare), when students are mature enough to understand and appreciate Early Modern English and the themes. (What do you think?)

I also had a chance to catch up with our soon-to-be Darien Library guest, David Baldacci (he'll be here on Thursday, November 5th at 7 p.m.). We talked about the enormous crowds at the festival and the long (LONG)  lines for book sales and author signings...refreshing and heartening news amid the doom and gloom reports about the publishing industry and the future of books. 

We talked about his upcoming book True Blue, which publishes at the end of October. He'll be introducing a whole new character with this book - Mace Perry (do I detect another series???). He's looking forward to coming to Darien Library to tell us all about it...and we can't wait!